the fundraiser's video: https://youtu.be/BtKzyPMe1f4?si=1Uy3sShZs4RDf2a2

website: www.aboutroystonwood.com

launch article: https://www.northern-scot.co.uk/news/from-elgin-to-america-the-colourful-life-of-singing-schola-389610/

++additions aug 2025: ch. 1: the early days ('35-'60) - media (bbc 1973 tape) - voices (a.hutchings - h.wood - s.collins - d.amram)++

This is a crowdfunding appeal to operate a biographical and archival website which concerns the English folk musician Royston Wood (1935 – 1990), who would have been 90 years old this year on February 20. To begin with, the website should be online for two years.

Royston is probably best known as the co-founder and bass-baritone singer in the unaccompanied British folk trio The Young Tradition, who were mainly active between 1965 and 1969. However, he kept on developing many interesting musical ideas throughout the 1970s, including recording an unreleased solo album for Bill Leader and co-founding the first touring Albion Country Band in 1971, singing with Swan Arcade in 1973 and creating an unfinished ballad opera about the historic Suffolk heroine Margaret Catchpole from 1974 to 1977. Due to various reasons, many of his projects did not come to official results. However, Royston’s friends – mostly journalists, fellow musicians and radio presenters – saved his ideas from oblivion by documenting them through interviews and tape recordings.

With this project I decided to research on his life and music, and also provide to younger generations a picture of the British folk revival scene of the late 1960s and 1970s - a scene which worked in a very cooperative and non-commercial way, and set out to create vivid and exciting music on the ground of traditional music. I, being a 31-year-old physician, amateur folk musician and occasional writer, have been greatly inspired by this scene and have immersed myself in its output since 2011, and so this project is very dear to my heart.

Thankfully, many nice people – Royston’s friends, colleagues and family members – agreed to interviews in which they shared their memories, great anecdotes and sometimes even pictures and tapes from their private archives which feature Royston and his various groups in action. The telephone and zoom interviews with members of Steeleye Span, Muckram Wakes and the Albion Country Band have been especially enlightening. The most exciting recordings that recently have been unearthed are a bootleg of a complete Young Tradition gig from 1966, a recording of a June Tabor club gig in the early-to-mid 1970s (featuring Royston as a floor singer), radio programmes about Royston (and featuring him singing and playing the concertina), and excerpts from the Young Tradition reunion at the University of Massachussetts Eisteddfod in 1988.

So, why do I want to operate this biography as a website? The first advantage is that certainly there will be imprecisions in my text – I am just have not been around back in the day, and thus have to reconstruct everything from the sources at hand. The website allows readers to get in touch via mail, correct mistakes or omissions, or provide additional information. It thus allows for an open source, grassroots-type process. A further advantage is that references to audio recordings, pictures or other sources are easier to embed into a webside than into a book. I cannot rule out that after the two years I might feel like printing the text as a book as well; this, however, is not part of this crowdfunding appeal.

The project itself has been a happy leisure activity for me which has kept me entertained in trains, waiting rooms, during lunch breaks and on rainy days – I do not want to earn any money with the writing per se. However, the operation of the ad-free website costs me money. Furthermore, I am trying to obtain digitised versions of tapes featuring Royston from private and official archives - with the kind help of Royston's relatives. The latest sources that shall be digitised and, thus, saved for posterity. are two tapes in the Library of Congress of the USA: a Young Tradition tape from 1968, and a tape of a complete 1976 concert by ‘No Relation’ (Royston Wood and Heather Wood). To make up for all digitisation costs, including other tapes from private archives, money is needed. Thirdly, I am planning on an extensive journey to the UK to visit and interview some of Royston’s colleagues and visit places, including 30 Somali Rd, London; Cecil Sharp House, London; Thornton Heath; Leiston; and County Moray. Any surplus money of this appeal will fund this journey.

Overall, researching Royston’s life has never felt like a retrospective process. I think that the very nature of Royston’s idea – bringing the rootedness of folk music, the verve of pop music and the elegance of classical music together – is still visionary, and would be a great starting point from which to continue making music today.